has anyone gone this path? the reality that bi polar II which is usually the depression aspects of manic depression without the hypermanic states - or few hypermanic states. But when the doctor diagnose they label it clinical depression - and give anti depressants which in very many cases trigger the hyper episodes or deepen the depression.. It has been found that in the case of depression tied in with bi polar epilepsy medications work better for depression than anti depressants or anti psychotics. My sister has been on tegretol for 20 years for grand mals associated with complex partial epilepsy with secondary generalization.. I recently found out that before she started taking tegretol she was having panic attacks all the time - even while on phenobarbitol for the epilepsy - but once started on the tegretol at 800mgs daily she has never had a panic attack since.. I myself have suffered with panic disorder for the last 29 years - with all sorts of anti depression and anti psychotic use being the treatment - however recently I switched to Klonopin in stead of ativan or xanax - and noticed an improvement (as in no panic attacks) right away. Study of this told me that Klonopin was often used in treatment of epilepsy but usually was only effective for the first three to four months then dosage had to be increased but eventully the seizures would return without additional seizure medication being given.. I am now assuming that in my case the panic disorder is associated with seizure disorder of a lower grade - of course seizure activity and panic attacks are very similar in nature as far as body response except seizure activity involves the cerebral cortex while panic attacks involve the peripheral nervous system. I went off anti depressants and anti psychotics about three months ago when one doctor i was seeing for some other stuff kept saying "your depressed your depressed you need to talk to your psychiatrist about a med change." at the time I realizes he was entirely correct - that the meds that I was then on remeron and seroquel where not really doing anything for depression they were just making me not care. I did not have any withdrawal and remained on the klonopin - and have been waiting to see the shrink to exchange ideas on this subject of epilepsy medications.. I think I will ask for tegretol but wondered if anyone here had experienced this revelation regarding panic disorder - and if anyone had their depression treated with tegretol, dilantin,neurontin, depakote
lamotrigine, or the new improved version of tegretol - trileptal? When I gave up the meds three months ago I have noticed little change in depression but have noted the my sense of panic has tapered off - as if the anti depressants and anti psychotics where exasperating that component of my mental state - I have been diagnosed with both clinical depression and bi polar two - but my thinking is the doctors have been treating the clinical depression as a separate entity and overlooking the bi polar depression when perhaps it should have been the other way around.

Hi wow that is interesting. When I took Effexor for my severe depression. I had worsening depression and more common was the escalating level of mania (when on the meds). The doctor told me that I most likely had bipolar disorder and that he wanted me to weight a while before going off the effexor so he could be sure. I felt the same hyper manic person on the meds and I just go so fed up with medications that I quit the psychiatrist and worked on my issues with a conselor. BUT I still get highly depressed every now and then. And sometimes I get mania.....maybe more often that I know because I get sooo annoyed and irate at almost anything. And for weeks on end I just don't feel happy but instead irate and worried. Relaxing does seem to help. Maybe I should have taken some of those convulsion meds.